The present invention refers to a contact element provided upon the side of the circuit path and electrically connected to at least one circuit path for use in at least partially SMD printed circuit boards, for external contacting to their SMD component side.
Current supply and/or signal transfer from or to a SMD printed circuit board may be achieved via soldered terminals or via detachable contact elements. In the latter case, one of the two coacting contact elements is resilient. It is also known to create during making of circuit paths contact surfaces which cooperate with contact springs as complementary or countercontact. Further, several types of contact pins or contact bolts designed as rotational part and possibly profiled are known which extend perpendicular to the circuit board and traverse respective bores of the circuit board for threaded or riveted connection therewith. Such contact elements permit contacting above the circuit path plane, and at sufficient length of the pins or bolts, a contacting above the component with the greatest structural height. In circuit boards which are laminated along one side, such contact elements have the drawback of including voltage-carrying or signal carrying areas along the non-laminated back side while in circuit boards with both sides being laminated these areas become unavailable for further components and/or circuit paths. In both these cases, this type of contact elements complicates handling of the circuit boards during the essentially automatic assembly process and requires a separate soldering step for electrically connecting the contact element with the pertaining circuit path.